Setting expectations

Not setting correct expectations – I believe this is the downfall of many organizations and individuals. If you set an expectation and do not deliver then you have failed, simple as that. Doing it regularly it gets you a bad name, people are reluctant to work with you and in some cases can get you fired.

I think the reason most people fall into this miss-setting expectations trap is a fear of saying ‘no’. It’s not that difficult, I have never met (a reasonable) person yet who has baulked at the idea of “I can’t do it in that timescale unless we let something else drop”. Most people would rather have an accurate expectation than something that agreed to just to appease them and then not delivered upon.

Why am I writing this post – well, this just popped into my mind when I was researching something for work. I wanted some technical information and it was one of those annoying companies who put up barriers to their customers being successful like not providing someone to speak about presales issue to, only providing email support, the type of companies that you know have no dedicated support and are abusing their developers into handling support issues, or have a vastly understaffed team (one overworked, stressed out, on the edge, guy) and are trying to manage the volume effectively…

Anyway, I filled out their web form asking my question, got the (usually) ‘Submit’ button and found this…

Wow, Help Me Now, now I have very high expectations – well, actually, based on experience I don’t, but they are trying to say ‘hey, we want to help YOU RIGHT NOW, THIS INSTANCE, NOT TOMORROW, TODAY, THIS MINUTE’.

On submit I get…

Awwww – now I’m sad. Such high hopes I had, for my dedicated cross functional team of support ninjas, waiting with bated breath to solve my problem. Still, maybe they’ll call me tomorrow sometime, or whenever the next business day is…